


Spot In My Heart

by wright_or_wrong



Category: Community (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-04
Updated: 2016-11-04
Packaged: 2018-08-28 19:15:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 13,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8459803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wright_or_wrong/pseuds/wright_or_wrong
Summary: A collection of odds and ends written for Jeff x Annie appreciation week 2016. All unrelated, ranging from fluff to AU to angst and everything in between.





	1. Stranger Things Have Come To Pass

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For Day 1 of #jxaappreciationweek2016, here is some fluff. I borrowed it from a story that I’ve long since abandoned, but I think it stands on its own all right. Takes place sometime post-S6, I'd say.

–

He really has to learn to be careful what he wishes for. **  
**

Just yesterday morning, he was scheming and plotting to get out of going to Greendale’s annual Halloween party, trying to figure out some ironclad excuse that even Annie wouldn’t find fault with, and selling his soul to the devil himself wouldn’t have seemed too high a price to pay to get out of another evening playing dress-up at that circus masquerading as a community college.

Now, though, he is certain that even sharing a dance floor with the likes of Leonard and Garrett would be preferable to spending the entire night on the floor of his bathroom, throwing up every ten minutes like clockwork.

Annie will still be disappointed – because for some crazy reason, she’s been looking forward to going to the party for weeks, despite the fact that she’s moved onto to bigger and better things than Greendale herself, despite the fact that he offered to take her anywhere else on earth to celebrate the holiday that somehow neither one of them has outgrown – but he’ll come up with some way to make it up to her.

Once he stops puking up every scrap of food that he’s ever eaten and all of his internal organs.

He also makes it clear in his text that she shouldn’t miss the party on his account, so it’s not like she really has anything to hold against him.

And still, as he finally manages to drag himself off the tile floor and into bed, he can just make out the faint sound of keys jingling in the hallway outside his apartment. The  front door opens then, and he can hear Annie thanking someone and the door closing once more.

When he manages to pry his eyes open, she is peering down at him, concern etched all over her pretty face.

“How’d you get in?” he mumbles.

“Your super. I told him you were sick.”  She lays a hand on his forehead, and while he doesn’t think he has a fever, her fingers feel blessedly cool against his flushed skin. “I thought that California roll looked funny,” she murmurs.

She definitely doesn’t need to remind him – since about two this morning, he’s been kicking himself for not listening to her when she expressed concern over the sushi. Of course, she wisely ordered the teriyaki chicken, so her stomach isn’t turning itself inside out in an effort to escape from her body in protest like his is.

“I don’t need any ‘I told you so’s’ right now,” he groans. “I need to be left alone in my misery until sweet death overtakes me.”

She cocks her head, looking decidedly unamused as she busies herself trying to make him more comfortable. Her coat falls open as she straightens the sheets around him, and she’s got her Wonder Woman costume on under it so she must just be stopping by on her way to the party – he’s not quite sure how he missed the gold tiara/headband thing in her hair but it probably had something to do with the cramps tearing their way through his stomach.

“I didn’t realize you were this bad,” she says. “I thought you were just being melodramatic. Or trying to get out of going to the party.” She breezes out of the room suddenly, moving so quickly that it makes him a little dizzy.

“Well, now you can see for yourself that I’m really dying so…”

“You are _not_ dying,” she insists, somehow already back at his bedside like she’s appeared out of thin air. She sets the plastic trash can from his bathroom on the floor beside him and drapes a cool, damp rag on his forehead. “You just need to rest.”

He really wants to argue the point – because he is expecting the Grim Reaper at any moment and not some kid in a costume, begging for candy, but the real, genuine article, hellbent on delivering him up to the afterlife on a silver platter – but he’s too tired and feels too awful, so he closes his eyes and searches for oblivion. He is just about to drift off when he hears her move into the living room and then the front door close again and he figures that she’s on her way to the party so he’ll be left alone to die in peace.

He isn’t sure how long he sleeps, but the next time that he comes awake, the wet cloth that Annie placed on his forehead sits cold and clammy against his shoulder, and there is a bottle of water, a can of ginger ale, and a jug of Gatorade sitting beside a box of Saltines on his nightstand.

It still takes a long moment for him to realize that he’s not alone in bed, though.

Beside him, Annie sits up against the headboard, with a textbook in her lap and a highlighter in her hand. She still has her costume on, because for some reason, she doesn’t really keep any real clothes at his place, but she’s thrown one of his hooded sweatshirts on over her sexy, patriotic bodysuit.

“Feeling any better?” she asks, when she sees that he’s awake.

“A little,” he croaks, and it’s true – he doesn’t think that he’s going to projectile vomit the second that he sits up anymore.

“You have to watch out for dehydration,” she says. “So drink something when you feel up to it. I always swear by ginger ale when I have an upset stomach.”

He nods, but isn’t brave enough to try to anything carbonated just yet. So he sips some water, hoping like hell that it doesn’t set off his stomach again. Annie grabs the remote from the table on her side of the bed, turning on the TV and cuing up Netflix.

He works hard to replace the water bottle on his nightstand without moving any more than is absolutely necessary, so the movie is already starting before he realizes that she’s chosen “The A-Team.” He wanted to watch it the other night, citing nostalgia for his childhood, but she complained that it didn’t have any female characters.

“Jessica Biel’s in it,” he pointed out.

“But she’s just there to be Bradley Cooper’s love interest. She isn’t much of a character in her own right.”

“I thought you liked Bradley Cooper,” he teased.

“I do. A lot. But even he’s not enough to make up for the complete lack of a female point of view.”

Somehow, she convinced him to watch “Moonstruck” instead, which actually satisfied a different kind of childhood nostalgia because he could remember his mother dragging him to see it when he was barely a teenager.

He figures that Annie must be planning to leave now that she knows he’s feeling almost human, because he can’t think of any other reason that she’d put on a movie that she doesn’t want to watch, but as he watches, she adjusts the pillow behind her back and finds her highlighter again among the sheets, so it doesn’t seem like she’s planning to leave any time soon.

She actually stays for the entire movie – even though she rolls her eyes at least a half dozen times at what’s happening on screen – and even later still, when he throws up again in the trash can beside his bed. She rubs his back during all of it, and and he’s kind of embarrassed that she’s seeing him like this, but he also doesn’t want to be alone and the whole thing makes his head ache even more.

He tries to remember the last time that a woman really took care of him like this, and nothing readily comes to mind, which probably means that it goes all the way back to his mother, a woman who was obligated to see to his well-being.

Somehow, he manages to convince Annie that he’s steady enough on his feet for a shower. She insists on helping him to the bathroom, though, and he tells himself that it’s not an affront to his dignity that she stays on the other side of the curtain just in case he falls, but it’s still pretty strange because he’s not used to feeling quite this vulnerable with another person.

But that’s what relationships are like, he reminds himself. They make it so you don’t have to go it alone.

After she helps him back to bed, she leans over to fluff his pillows and straighten the blankets. The glossy, dark curtain of her hair falls over her face, and he tugs on a strand, managing a weak smile.

“You nailed your costume,” he says. “Because you really are Wonder Woman.”

Her cheeks get a little pink, and she avoids eye contact. “I might believe you a little more if you weren’t delirious and dehydrated right now.”

He tries to shake his head against his pillow. “I mean it.”

But she doesn’t seem to take him seriously, shaking her head indulgently as she roots around in one of his drawers for a tee shirt to sleep in. When she turns off the lights and crawls into bed beside him, he turns to her, still smiling.

“I’ve never said this to a woman before,” he says. “But I’d totally clean up after you if you puke.”

Annie laughs, her hand finding his in the dark and curling around his wrist. “You kind of owe me after all this.”

He doesn’t really understand why being indebted to someone else should feel so good, but as he drifts off to sleep again, he definitely isn’t about to complain.


	2. The One You Need The Least (Is The One You Want The Most)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here is a little AU action for Day 2 of #jxaappreciationweek2016. 
> 
> This is a quick (possible) scene from a fic that I plan to write after I finish my current WIP, so consider this a preview. (The one sticking point is finding a way to write Jeff believably in his role in the AU… that’s still very much a WIP, no pun intended. :P)
> 
> Major thanks to teruel-a-witch, who’s already spent hours brainstorming for this fic with me even though it’s yet to be written.

_–_

When he looks through the one-way mirror, he expects to find a run-of-the-mill damsel in distress, a girl terrified of things that go bump in the night and monsters under the bed and possibly her own shadow. **  
**

But the woman who he’s watching in the empty interrogation room, fiddling with a bottle of water,  is anything but ordinary and looks more defiant than fearful.  He is momentarily caught off-guard by how pretty she is, with her dark, shiny hair that curls over her shoulders perfectly, and those wide, blue eyes that seem both innocent and all-knowing, and a curvy, little body that fills out a V-neck sweater and pair of jeans about as well as humanly possible – but he doesn’t miss the angry scrape on her chin or the bandage wrapped around her right hand either. He’d been told that she put up a fight against the thugs who tried to grab her, but he didn’t realize just how serious she’d been.

He really doesn’t want his interest piqued, though, so the sight of her on the other side of the glass only makes the urge to dive headfirst into a bottle of scotch become even stronger, because he is getting the nagging feeling that this woman isn’t just going to be an annoyance.

She looks like she’s going to be a serious handful.

It’s going to take all the charm in his arsenal if he’s going to keep her in check, he thinks, so he definitely made the right choice this morning when he went with the cobalt tie that brings out his eyes in just the right way. He smooths it in place against his crisp white button-down before opening the door to the interrogation room.

“Ms. Edison,” he says warmly. “Sorry to keep you waiting. I’m Agent Winger and I’ll be–”

“Let’s get one thing straight,” she declares, pushing her chair back to stand. “I don’t _need_ anyone to protect me. I’ve got a purple belt in karate, okay? I can take care of myself.”

He smiles. “Around guys with guns? I’m sure they’ll be really impressed when you model your belt for them.”

“But they’ll take you seriously?” she scoffs. “Some GQ cover model wannabe?”

He feels his jaw clench almost involuntarily – his instincts must be seriously off because he vastly underestimated the kind of pain in the ass that this woman could be. He isn’t a wannabe anything; he wears a designer suit better than anyone who’s ever graced the cover of a magazine. “Excuse me?” he says coolly.

She waves a dismissive hand over his body from head to toe. “I saw you primping before you came in here… you’re obviously someone who cares more about how he _looks_ than what he _does_. And I just don’t see how you’re any better equipped to keep me safe than I am.”

He glances back at the one-way mirror, wondering if Hickey is in there, catching all of this chick’s garbage. If he is, he’s probably fighting back laughter, thinking that Jeff is getting exactly what he deserves.

“First of all, there’s this,” Jeff says, pushing his jacket back so she can see the gun at his hip. “Second of all, I’ve gone through the Academy, I’ve been on the job for years, so I’m used to dealing with criminals and lowlifes.”

She eyes the gun on his holster skeptically. “Have you ever actually fired that in the line of duty?”

“Technically, no,” he admits reluctantly, unsure why he’s even bothering to tell the truth, and she smiles almost triumphantly. “But I have to get re-certified every year, so it’s not like I don’t know how to use it.” He lets his jacket drop, covering the gun once more. “And you know, just for the record, I don’t like the idea of wasting my time playing babysitter for you either, okay? But I wasn’t exactly given a choice. And you did witness a serious crime, so you should probably–”

“Which you guys are no closer to solving than right after it happened!”

“That was two days ago,” he reminds her. “I know TV shows and movies like to make it seem that you can wrap a case up in less than two hours, but in real life, it doesn’t happen overnight.”

She nods enthusiastically. “Oh, I know that. Believe me. And that’s why I figure that if they’re going to lock us in some safe house together, we should at least make the most of our time.”

He looks at her blankly. “Huh?”

“I mean, maybe you’re not the best agent they’ve got,” she says. “Because let’s face it, they wouldn’t be wasting you on protective custody if you were … but you’ve still got _some_ experience and you’ve got access to the case files, right? So that would be–”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

She shrugs, looking at him like he might be a little slow. “You and I _solving_ this case. Are you really having trouble following along?”

Jeff laughs, wondering just how much Nancy Drew this girl read when she was growing up. “Sure, of course. Let’s let a civilian take on a case that the Denver bureau has been working for nearly two years. I’m sure you’ll be able to solve it just like that when a task force of 25 of our best agents hasn’t been able to.”

For a moment, Annie Edison glares at him as hard and as cold as anyone ever has and it isn’t that difficult to imagine that she could take on every drug runner from California to Texas without breaking a sweat – but her chest is also heaving in a mesmerizing way, straining against the purple fabric of her sweater so he is seriously distracted.

“I am _not_ a civilian,” she grits out. “Okay, well, technically I am. But I’m getting my Master’s Degree in criminology, with a concentration in crime scene analysis, so it’s not like I don’t know how to investigate…”

He sighs, checking his watch. “Look, I’m sure you made a really impressive diorama about the evolution of DNA evidence in criminal investigations,” he says, ignoring her scowl. “But it’s not our job to solve this, okay? Our job is to go hole up in a pretty nice safe house and make sure that you stay alive. Let’s not make it any more complicated than that, all right?”

She snorts, and while the sound is pretty obnoxious, he’s got to admit that somehow she can pull it off.

“Of course! Of course, you just want to go prop your feet up and drink a beer, act like you’re on vacation or something. But it’s not–”

“Ms. Edison,” he says, as patiently as he can manage. “I promise that you can rant about how lazy I am and how much of a pretty boy I am as much as you want… but let’s at least move this conversation to the car so we can head to your apartment and you can get your stuff and we can make it to the safe house before next Christmas, okay?”

She flushes, and he is expecting another glare, another tirade about his lack of skills or work ethic, but she drops her gaze to the floor and tucks her hair behind her ear. “I don’t remember ever saying you were pretty,” she mutters.

He grins, feeling the whole situation turning in his favor just a bit. “I may have taken a little creative license there,” he says. “It’s not really off base, though, is it?”

It takes a moment for her to look up at him again, but when she does, she is wearing a sexy, little smirk, even as she grabs her coat from the back of the chair beside her. “This is why we have to solve the case,” she declares. “If I have to spend more than 24 hours  locked in a house with you, _your_ life is going to be in danger.”

“Maybe you’ll have to show me some of those purple-belt moves so I can protect myself,” he teases.

She only glances at him quickly, over her shoulder, but he’s pretty sure that she’s smiling.


	3. When There's No One Left To Blame

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is small dose of old school angst for Day 3 of #jxaappreciationweek2016. It’s actually part of a post-S2 fic that I’m still working on, and will hopefully finish eventually, so you may see it again in a longer story someday.

–

The get-together is Shirley’s idea.

It’s barely been two weeks since classes ended, since that stupid paintball game, since Pierce made his dramatic exit, and Shirley is obviously worried. She’s just had a baby, but she’s still concerned about her dysfunctional, little study group family, about making sure that there aren’t any hurt feelings still lingering, that their unit isn’t coming apart at the seams.

That’s really the only reason that Annie agrees to go. She is, to varying degrees, tired of all of them and welcomes the three month summer break as a time to get a little distance for herself before all the drama inevitably starts again in the fall. But Shirley is feeling anxious, and if hanging out with the group is going to make her feel better, then it seems like the least that Annie can do.

They eventually decide to go bowling, and Annie is grateful because the night that they went to the bar for Troy’s birthday was so strange and sad that she isn’t in any hurry to go drinking with the group again. The bowling alley, it turns out, is a good compromise because there’s technically a bar there, but the whole point of the evening isn’t getting drunk. It gets Shirley out of the house and into the world too, which is probably another part of the reason that she arranges the night out – she needs a break from diaper duty with a newborn.

It takes a while to actually get the game going because Troy and Abed are distracted by the crane game next to the entrance and Jeff has to veto three pairs of shoes before he deems one acceptable and Britta gets into an argument with the guy at the snack bar over their vegetarian offerings. Annie stands back, watching her friends be so completely who they are, and she can’t quite believe that it’s only been two years since she started at Greendale, since she met these people and fashioned some sort of family out of them.

Maybe that’s why she feels so desperate to hold on to it all. She needs to believe that some families don’t give up on each other, even when they hurt one another, even when they disappoint one another, even when they barely like one another some days.

Now that there’s an even number of them, it’s easy to choose teams and they go the predictable route – guys against girls. It’s only a friendly game, a way to reassure one another that they’re all fine despite everything that’s happened, but Annie’s still mildly annoyed that Shirley and Britta are such terrible bowlers. She may not be a world beater, but she can routinely bowl around 100 – they ignore her pointers about their poor form and wind up throwing gutter balls every other frame.

So the guys wipe the floor with them, and Troy can’t stop crowing about it, in his innocently obnoxious way.

“You guys _suck_ ,” he says, shaking his head in wonder. “S-U-C-K. Su–”

“We can spell, Troy,” Britta snaps.

Shirley clucks her tongue in disappointment. “There is such a thing as a sore winner, Troy. I have to scold Elijah about that all the time. Don’t make me do it with you too.”

“Yeah, well, maybe you’re just being sore losers,” Troy counters. “Maybe you need to learn how to lose with some class.”

“Oh, I know you didn’t just imply that I lack class, Troy Barnes. I know you didn’t–”

“He’s not implying it, Shirley! He’s straight up saying we have no class. He’s being completely–”

“You know what this party needs?” Jeff interrupts. “Booze… and lots of it. You’re all wound way too tight.”

Somehow, despite all the bickering, they make it to the snack bar, where Jeff orders a couple of pitchers of beer and Troy and Abed insist on getting some sort of nachos volcano for the table, and eventually, things start to simmer down. Maybe it’s because they all know that they won’t see each other much over the summer – except for Troy and Abed, of course, who will probably be joined at the hip as usual – so it’s their last hurrah and they want to leave with happy memories.

Annie still feels exhausted by all of it, and it’s probably just her, but something feels off without Pierce around. She thinks back to the first semester this year, when she was so determined to escape the embarrassment that is Greendale and flee to City College, and she can’t help wondering if the group would have been able to move on from her just as easily, if they would have closed the circle around the table just as soon as the ink was dry on her transfer forms.

Something about that line of thinking rattles her, so she excuses herself under the guise of using the bathroom. She goes off in search of fresh air instead, as if that might magically fix her mood.

It’s cool out in the parking lot, even if the air is heavy with gasoline and cigarette smoke, so she sits on the curb and tips her head back to study the sky. There are barely any stars visible tonight, just a lonely moon more than half-illuminated in the darkness. She took that astronomy class with Troy last year, so she could pick out the constellations easily now, but whenever she remembers to look, there aren’t any stars to see.

A shadows looms over her suddenly, and she curses herself for being so distracted that she didn’t notice someone sneaking up on her. She’s less than ten feet from the bowling alley’s door, so she’s probably not in any real danger, but she takes a deep breath anyway, trying to calm herself.

“You disappeared.”

Immediately, she recognizes the voice, all warm and low and intimate, and part of her can’t help but thinking that she’d be better off with some random stranger stumbling upon her – she’d rather take her chances with a possible serial killer than Jeff at the moment.

“I just needed some air,” she says, which is mostly the truth and that seems close enough after everything that’s happened recently.

Jeff doesn’t say anything as he sits on the concrete beside her. It occurs to her then how big he is, with his long legs stretched out in front of him, and she supposes that it makes sense because his presence always seems to take up so much space in her life. She kicks at a glittering rock with the toe of her ballet flat, watching it scatter into the darkness.

“You’re still upset about Pierce,” Jeff says.

She hates how easily he can read her mind, so she almost wants to say, Yes, and other things, like you trying to paint me as some delusional schoolgirl with a desperate, hopeless crush, just to shock him. She knows that it would make him squirm, twist his mouth into that petulant, little pout that he always wears when he’s forced to hear something that he doesn’t like.

But it would only be satisfying for a moment – then she’d be reminded of all the hurt and the shame, and she’d be just as uncomfortable as he is.

“And you’re still delighted,” is what she says instead.

Jeff shakes his head slowly. “I’m not delighted, Annie. I just think it’s for the best.”

“And you always know what’s best,” she snaps, and is immediately embarrassed by the outburst. She stands abruptly, brushing off the back of her dress, and even though she studiously avoids his eyes, she can feel him watching her, the weight of his gaze so intense that it’s as if he’s trying to memorize every inch of her body and she can feel her skin start to warm – and she wishes that she could call the rest of the group out here right now, so they could see firsthand that she hasn’t imagined anything, that nothing about the spark between them is one-sided.

Instead, it’s another moment that only she is witness to.

“Are you mad at me?” Jeff asks, sounding more amused than anything else – which only confirms that her anger is entirely justified.

But she shrugs, playing it cool. “Why would I be mad?”

She does her best to sound genuinely confused, and there is part of her that’s almost hoping he’ll guess, acknowledge all of the crappy things that he’s said and done recently that are worthy of her ire.

But he stays stubbornly silent, like it’s not worth his time to analyze her feelings, like none of this really matters much to him, so she turns back toward the bowling alley entrance.  

She doesn’t make it very far, though, because Jeff reaches for her hand, curling his long fingers around her wrist, and she hates herself for the way that she shivers, but it’s just like any other reflex that she can’t control.

He mumbles something then, but a car is passing through the parking lot and she can’t hear him clearly over the crunch of the gravel – he either says, “It’ll work out,” or “We’ll work it out,” but she isn’t about to ask him to repeat himself.

So she just nods – because she knows that he’s almost certainly right.

After three months of summer, they’ll go right back to pretending that nothing’s happened, that everything’s just peachy, even with Pierce gone and her heart a little bruised (Not broken, though. It’s not like he has that kind of power over her), and it will seem like everything has worked out exactly as it should.

She moves for the door again, but Jeff doesn’t snatch his hand away like she’s expecting. His fingers just sort of glide off her skin, and she can’t help imagining his fingerprints burning into her so that no matter what she does, she’ll never really be able to come clean again.

“They’re probably missing us,” she says.

She strides purposefully back inside without waiting to see if he’s following.


	4. Our Hearts Learn Slow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is (kind of) a headcanon fic for Day 4 of #jxaappreciationweek2016. 
> 
> Okay, I’m fudging things a little here because this is not strictly a missing scene or end tag fic. I mean, it’s kind of a missing scene(s) of sorts, but not in the sense that it fits directly in an existing episode or right after, if that makes sense. But given the way both Annie and Britta react (or don’t, as the case may be) in the S6 finale, I’ve kind of been thinking about something like this happening at some point. *shrugs* Or maybe not. I don’t know. :P
> 
> Takes place post-S5.

–

When Britta calls, she’s already in bed, trying to get through one more chapter in her book before she turns off the light. She checks the time and sees that it’s after midnight so her sixth sense for trouble instantly kicks in.

“Hey,” Britta drawls, trying hard to sound casual, and there’s music and laughter and the sound of glasses knocking around in the background so Annie knows that she’s probably still at work. “Sorry to call so late…”

Annie shrugs, even though she can’t be seen. “It’s okay. Is everything alright?”

Britta sighs. “Yeah… yeah. I mean, there’s nothing _wrong_. It’s just … Jeff’s here.”

It’s strange how quickly her body tenses up, like all of her muscles have coiled in on themselves, as if her blood has gone all hot and fizzy and cold and lethargic at the same time. It’s only been two months since they saved Greendale, since Jeff and Britta were going to get married, and even though they called the whole thing off without a second thought, Annie still doesn’t know how to act around them anymore.

It seems unnatural to feel so unsure about two people who mean so much to her, but she doesn’t know what to do about it.

“Okay,” she says carefully into the phone. “So?”

“So… he’s _really_ drunk. Like can’t-really-lift-his-head-off-the-bar drunk.”

Annie sighs, because it was not even 12 weeks ago that he wound up in the hospital and the image of him in that bed still haunts her sometimes. “Is he okay? Does he need a doctor or –”

“No, he’s not… it’s not _that_ serious. He just needs to go home and sleep it off. I’d put him in a cab, but I honestly don’t know if he could make it from the sidewalk in front of his building up to his apartment on his own right now. And last call isn’t for another couple of hours so I can’t take him myself.” Britta pauses, cursing at someone in the background. “Sorry… I don’t mean to … do you think you could come and get him?”

It has to be a trick question, Annie thinks. Because of course she _could_. She just doesn’t want to. She is tired and in her pajamas and not in the mood to deal with a drunk person and definitely not in the right frame of mind to deal with a drunk Jeff.

But she doesn’t want to seem like a selfish jerk, so she tries to appeal to Britta’s sense of logic. “You expect me to be able to corral giant, drunken Jeff? Seriously?”

“Annie,” Britta sighs, sounding very tired and worn herself. “I just think you’d be the best person for this.”

At first, that seems like a strange thing to say, but then Annie reconsiders.

Abed isn’t that big himself, though he could probably handle Jeff a little easier than Annie – but he’s off with Rachel, and it doesn’t exactly seem fair to interrupt his evening for this. Shirley’s too busy planning her out-of-state move to bother with drunken antics. And if Britta called Duncan, it’s a pretty safe bet that he wouldn’t actually help Jeff off his bar stool; he’d just set up camp on the next one and get sloshed himself.

Maybe she is the best option.

So she throws on a tee shirt and a pair of shorts, and drives over to The Vatican before she can talk herself out of it. It’s a Wednesday night, so the place is barely half full and she spots Jeff almost immediately when she comes through the door. He is slumped over the counter at the far corner of the bar, lethargically trying to flip cardboard coasters onto the wood in front of him without much success.

The double-take that he does when he sees her is almost amusing because he nearly falls off his stool and joins all the scattered coasters on the floor around him.

“Hey,” he slurs. “Where’d _you_ come from?”

There’s a strange kind of wonder in his voice, almost as if he thinks that she just materialized out of thin air.

“Britta called. She said you might need some help getting home.”

Jeff rests his elbow on the bar, using his hand to prop up his head so he can gaze up at her with a soft smile. “I was just thinking about you,” he admits, and though his eyes are kind of droopy and glassy, his grin still makes her feel a little flushed.

“Good things, I hope.”

He nods emphatically. “Always.”

Britta appears behind the bar then, handing Annie a bottle of water and a black plastic garbage bar. “In case he gets sick on the way home,” she explains.

Annie grimaces, though she’s grateful for Britta’s foresight. She eyes Jeff, who looks like nothing but dead weight on his bar stool, and wonders how on earth she is supposed to get him all the way home.

“Thanks for coming,” Britta says, and Annie feels strange and uncomfortable again, because it’s almost as if she sees Jeff as her personal responsibility, the person who should be seeing to his well-being, as if Annie’s own relationship with Jeff wouldn’t normally include this type of favor. “I just really think you’re the best person for the job.”

“I don’t really see how,” Annie says. “He’s got more than a hundred pounds on me. I’m not sure how I’m going to drag him out of here.”

“I can walk,” Jeff insists, lurching to his feet as if in protest of the fact that they’re talking about him like he’s not there. But he is definitely unsteady, having to clutch at the edge of the bar to right himself. “See?”

Annie smile blandly, hoping she seems somewhat encouraging. She catches Britta’s eye, and leans across the bar to whisper to her now that it seems he’s actually paying attention to what they’re saying. “Do you know why he was drinking?” she asks.

Britta looks away, wiping aggressively at the bar with a damp rag. “Who knows? I mean, this is Jeff. He doesn’t exactly open up, you know?”

Annie does sort of know, but the fact that Britta seems to be frantically wishing that a hole would open in the dirty tile beneath her feel and swallow her is enough to make anyone uneasy. Maybe it’s just some private, intimate thing between Jeff and Britta, something that Annie doesn’t have any right knowing, that she doesn’t really want to know, not if she’s going to continue being friends with them.

Jeff drops a heavy arm around her shoulders then, leaning against her like he actually expects her to hold him up, and she figures it’s best to leave it alone. 

Somehow, she manages to get him out of the bar and into her car, which seems toy-sized with his giant body jammed inside of it. She worries about having to have a drunken conversation with him on the way back to his place, but he spends the first half of the ride with his head hanging out the open window like an overexcited dog, singing along to “Livin’ la Vida Loca” on the radio with such enthusiasm that the jeep full of teenagers stopped next to them at a red light actually take their phones out to record his performance for YouTube posterity.

The second half of the ride, though, he rolls the window back up, leans his head against the glass, and closes his eyes, lost to her and the world.

When they make it up to his apartment, she has to fish his keys out of his jeans’ pocket, because his fine motor skills have all but deserted him, and she feels clumsy and awkward, with his warm breath ghosting over her cheek as she hunts for them. She hasn’t been to his apartment enough to know where all of the light switches are, so she guides him to the bedroom in the dark. He collapses onto the bed on his back, flinging an arm across his eyes as if he anticipates her flipping on the lamp on his nightstand.

When she actually does it, though, he groans all the same.

She leans over him to arrange the pillows behind his head, and he’s suddenly giggling against her tee shirt, curling his fingers into the hem to give it a tug.

“I love your boobs,” he tells her.

She rolls her eyes, punching her fist against one of his pillows under the guise of fluffing it. “Jeff, don’t–”

“They’re just all kinds of perfect.” He pulls at her shirt a little harder. “But you… you totally know that, right?”

In her entire life, she can’t remember ever wanting to leave a room more, which is a testament to how frustrated she is at the moment because she is certain that she’s been in more uncomfortable, unpleasant situations than this. She sits gingerly on the edge of the mattress beside his hip to take a deep breath.

“We can talk about it in the morning,” she says, knowing full well that they’ve never speak a word of any of this.

He mumbles something into his arm, but she ignores it, moving to the foot of the bed to undo the laces on his tennis shoes. She isn’t about to undress him, but she figures that taking his shoes off should make him more comfortable. In his strangely bare kitchen, she manages to round up a couple of bottles of water so she offers him one along with a couple of the Advil that she keeps in her purse.

“Sit up and take these,” she instructs. “And drink as much of the water as you can. You’ll feel better if you do.”

His hand drops from his face, and he blinks up at her in what seems like total confusion. Still, he slowly scoots up against the pillows, taking the pills and the water. Obediently, he swallows down the pain killers and then nearly drains the entire bottle of water in one sip. She sets the other bottle on his nightstand so it’s there for him later, and leaves the garbage bag that Britta provided on the floor beside the bed in case he gets sick.

It seems like she’s more than fulfilled her obligation to a friend.

This is the perfect time to leave, because it’s not like her being her is going to do him any good – Britta was right; he just needs to sleep this off – and it’s certainly not going to do her any good either.

So maybe it’s something like morbid curiosity that makes her turn to look at him again, slumped against the headboard like he’s carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. He looks absolutely pitiful, and she watches his chest rise and fall as he breathes to remind herself that he’s going to be fine.

But it doesn’t do enough to convince her, though, so almost against her will, she finds herself asking, “Is everything okay?”

She isn’t sure what she hopes to accomplish, considering that he’s too drunk to have any sort of real conversation, but she can’t seem to help herself.

He squints at her as if to confirm his inability to comprehend even a three word sentence. “Huh?”

“Did something happen with Britta?” she clarifies, and immediately regrets it. This is like picking at a fresh scab – it’s not going to take too much digging to draw blood. “Did you guys–”

“Britta?” he parrots back. “What would happen with Britta?”

“You guys were going to get married a couple of months ago. I just thought that maybe–”

“That wasn’t real,” he says, waving a dismissive hand.

Maybe it’s really that simple for him. Maybe all of his feelings are just that shallow and fleeting, lacking any kind of staying power. Maybe he doesn’t really feel anything at all.

She doesn’t want to think about any of it, though, so she heads for the windows, busying herself drawing the blinds so the sun won’t wake him too early in the morning. It’s a stupid detail to fixate on, she knows, but her mind doesn’t seem to understand how not to worry about Jeff, to fret over his well-being and happiness like she has some sort of personal investment in it.  

She really is going to leave now,  she decides, because she’s had enough of all of this.

But she doesn’t make it any further than the nightstand, where she plans to turn off the light again, because Jeff reaches out suddenly and curls his hand around her wrist.

“It was you, you know,” he says.

She refuses to look at him, but it seems impolite to ignore him completely. “It was me what?”

“In the basement. With that nut job Borchert’s computer or robot or whatever the hell it was.”

It’s silly to take any his drunken ramblings seriously, but she turns to look at him anyway. He’s lying down again, head tilted against the pillow so he can peer up at her with sleepy eyes.

“I don’t understand,” she tells him.

“When I thought about you…” He claps his hands together almost violently. “Boom! A blast of human passion.”

She tries to put all the pieces together in a way that makes sense, but she is too confused to make any of it fit. He’s drunk, she reminds herself. She shouldn’t expect any of his thoughts to be coherent right now.

She should just let it go. Leave him to some fitful sleep and a monster of a hangover and his own nonsensical ramblings.

Of course, Jeff won’t let her just walk away.

“Cause I’m stupidly in love with you,” he declares, rolling onto his side and burying his face in the pillow. “Have been for years, actually…”

She hears each and every one of his words, but they’re followed almost immediately by the sound of something like ocean waves, roaring loud and angry, in her ears. His eyes are closed now, and she looks at him, somewhere between sleep and dream, and in that instant, he looks totally unfamiliar, like a stranger who she is laying eyes on for the first time.

She’s always had a hopeful heart, an almost fatally eager and trusting soul, but she is utterly unprepared for this. Her hand actually shakes when she finally turns off the light and leaves Jeff in darkness.

She knows what she should do as she hurries down to her car.

She should go home, get back into bed where she was barely an hour and a half ago, and sleep this whole night away, doze until the world is right side up again – but she can’t seem to make herself do it.

Instead, she drives to Britta’s apartment – she’ll be off work soon, and she might have something to say that Annie needs to hear.

So she sits on the faded carpeting in the hallway outside Britta’s apartment, arms wrapped around her bent knees. As she waits, she tries to understand how loving someone could ever feel like something shameful, something unwanted and inconvenient, like a dirty secret that needs to be buried, but she can’t make herself do it no matter how hard she tries.

There is just no logic to it.

“Annie?”

She glances up and finds Britta looking down at her with concern. She pushes herself to her feet, her flip flop slipping against the carpet so she stumbles slightly.

“What are you doing here?” Britta asks as she takes her keys out of her bag. “Is everything okay with–”

“Why did you call me tonight? Why did you think I should be the one to take Jeff home?”

Britta shrugs. “Well, let’s face it, you’re probably the most patient of all of us. Especially when it comes to Jeff. And I knew Abed was taking Rachel to that performance art thing, and Duncan was probably passed out somewhere himself. Who else could I call? The dean? In the state that he was in, Jeff would’ve probably wound up posing for some kind of pin-up calendar or something…”

Annie nods, though she is barely paying attention. Britta gets the apartment door open, so she follows her inside, where a horde that’s at least three cats strong converge on Britta. They scatter as soon as they spot Annie, though, disappearing under the nearest pieces of furniture.

“Britta,” Annie tries again. “Why did you call me?”

The other woman drops her bag to the ground and heaves out a sigh. In that moment, it suddenly dawns on Annie how uncomfortable all of this must be for her, and normally, that thought alone would be enough to put an end to all of this, but Annie _has_ to ask because she _has_ to know.

“He was talking about you,” Britta finally says.

“When he was drunk?”

Britta nods without looking at her. “But a little bit before too.”

“What was he saying?” she practically demands, her voice going high and tight in a way that reminds her of panicked fights with her parents, of questions that should never be asked.

Britta seems just as surprised to have been asked, her eyes wide and panicked as she finally looks over at Annie. “I’m not sure what–”

“I’m sorry,” Annie blurts out. “I’m being so selfish. I shouldn’t have asked. I shouldn’t have asked you that.”

Britta lifts her shoulders, like all of this is beyond her. “I just thought he needed to see you,” she says. “That maybe it would help.”

“What should I….” Annie starts to ask, before she realizes how ridiculous it is to ask Britta for advice about this. Despite what went down a couple of months ago, she’s pretty sure that Britta isn’t in love with Jeff, but there’s still no way that any of this can feel very good for her. By most accounts, Annie’s probably on the winning side of this equation, the one who Jeff Winger apparently loves, but even that feels like a paltry consolation prize when he could ask another woman to marry him just an hour or so before he acknowledged how he feels about her, when he’d rather hide himself in the bottom of a bottle than face the truth of it, when he’s only able to share the contents of his heart if there’s enough scotch to fill an aquarium flowing through his bloodstream. “I’m sorry,” she mumbles. “I’m really sorry I bothered you. You’re tired from a long day at work and don’t need this crap to–”

“It’s okay, Annie.”

Annie huffs out a laugh, because while none of this is funny, she won’t let herself cry and that’s what she knows that she’d do otherwise. “Is it really?”

Britta pauses, head tilted like she’s thinking very carefully, trying her hardest to find an answer that feels like the truth. “Yeah,” she finally says. “Well, I mean, I _think_ it will be. Right?”

It is meant to be a rhetorical question, but as Annie drives herself home, she decides that Britta must be right.

It will be okay.

Because Jeff won’t remember anything that happened tonight and he’ll pretend that he doesn’t remember what he feels for her either and Annie will pretend too and Britta won’t mention any of it ever again and they’ll all go on just as they did yesterday and the day, the month, the years before.

Nothing will change, and nothing ever will, because even if Jeff really feels what he thinks he feels for her, it doesn’t mean anything if he won’t own up to it.

It can’t mean anything to her if he won’t.

At home, she changes back into her pajamas and goes back to finishing the chapter in the book she abandoned earlier.

It’s just like what she did yesterday. It’s just like what she’ll do tomorrow.

It’s all the same.

But she still won’t let herself cry.


	5. Like You Just Discovered Sound

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is a (sort of) song-inspired fic for Day 5 of #jxaappreciationweek2016. It’s more like a song-related fic, and I’m fudging again.
> 
> The song in question didn’t really inspire this fic, meaning it doesn’t make me think of J/A in any way, but a long while back, an anon asked if I’d write a fic where Annie catches Jeff listening to a certain singer and this is what I came up with.

–

When he first offered to cook her dinner, she thought that it was a pretty romantic gesture.

She’d been back from D.C. for nearly six weeks, and they were still trying to navigate the whole what-they-are-to-one-another and how-to-act-with-each-other minefields so Jeff was on his best behavior. Planning an elaborate, intimate dinner that he’d cook with his own two hands seemed like just one more small way of showing the effort that he was willing to put into whatever it was that was still developing between them, like when he’d given up his Saturday afternoon to keep her company while she shopped for a new laptop or when he’d agreed to go to paint night at the Mexican restaurant she loved without grumbling too much (and actually wound up painting a vase full of sunflowers that was better than hers).

So it didn’t occur to her until she sat at the counter in his kitchen and watched him start to prepare the meal that he might have ulterior motives. He laid out pieces of salmon, a bag of fresh green beans, and a couple of tomatoes on the counter in front of him, and she thought back to three or four meals that she’d cooked for him since they’d officially started to get to know one another in a brand, new way – they’d all been pasta, because it was quick and easy and kind of her specialty at this point in life when her time was better devoted to making her mark in the Master’s program rather than impressing Jeff with her culinary skills.

She’d used whole wheat linguine and rigatoni in all the dishes, and chose recipes with plenty of chicken and vegetables to balance out the pasta so they’d pass his nutritional muster, but she suspected that all the carb-loading must not have sat too well with him (she had caught him wincing once or twice when he’d added the meals to his My Fitness Pal food log, after all) and he didn’t want to admit that to her because of how careful they were being with each other – so maybe he’d decided to just take the reins and make something healthier than chicken-veggie pasta in garlic cream sauce.

(She’d been telling herself that she should watch some videos on YouTube about how to grill a perfect steak, because she knew that he allowed himself to indulge in those every now and then, because of all the protein, but she didn’t know when she’d have the time with the way her schedule was shaping up these days. Between classes at UC Denver, her internship at the Greendale forensics lab, and her part-time job at as an SAT tutor, she was lucky that she even had time to see Jeff at all. Becoming a grill master would have to wait.)

As she watched him go to work chopping a tomato, she decided that, in the end, it didn’t really matter why he was cooking for her. She couldn’t remember anyone making her dinner like this since she was still living in her mother’s house, and the novelty of it excited her enough that she didn’t really care how his motivation broke down.

It was kind of cute, too, how invested he was in making sure that everything turned out just right – which was why, when he noticed that he was out of balsamic vinegar and had a mini-breakdown, insisting that she run out and pick some up right away, she wasn’t the slightest bit annoyed.

Of course, she tried to tell him that it was fine, that she was happy to eat the salmon plain, but he was adamant that the glaze made all the difference in the world and he just couldn’t compromise the integrity of the dish in good conscience (he crossed his arms over his chest and leveled his most solemn stare at her when he said that bit, like he was talking about the fate of the free world and not the state of their dinner, and everything about that made her want to throw her arms around him and never let go).

Sure, Jeff was fussy in general, even when it came to little things like condiments, but the fact that it also had something to do with her, wanting to make it all perfect for her, meant that she had to go and get the stupid vinegar, no questions asked.

So she took the debit card that he offered and hurried off to get his stupid fancy vinegar so his low-carb dinner would be just as perfect as he’d been planning. Because of Jeff’s exacting standards, though, she couldn’t just run to the City Market a few blocks away from his apartment. Instead, he insisted that she go to a very specific gourmet store that was halfway across town, because he had to have a very specific brand of vinegar – and if she didn’t already don’t know how important this meal was to him, the fact that he was letting her take his car would have made it perfectly clear.

He might trust her with his heart, but he still didn’t didn’t trust her with his keys most days.

When she made it to the gourmet store, she was feeling amused and flattered in such a big way that she didn’t even react when the snooty clerk behind the counter acted like it was the world’s biggest imposition to get the bottle of vinegar down off the top shelf and then rolled his eyes when she told him that she didn’t need a bag.

On the ride back to Jeff’s apartment, though, she did stew a little over the creep’s behavior – it was totally unprofessional and out of line and she had a half a mind to check the store’s website to see if there was an email address where she could report him. She also made a mental note to tell Jeff that he should keep some reusable shopping bags in the trunk of his car, which was probably why she was so preoccupied  when she let herself back into the apartment that she didn’t hear the music at first.

As soon as she recognized the melody, it occurred to her how bizarre it was to hear this kind of song playing in Jeff’s apartment – and she wondered if maybe that was the other part of the reason why she didn’t pick up on the music at first.

It was so out of place in this apartment that it must not have registered as a distinct sound.

Things only got weirder, though, when she turned toward the kitchen and realized that Jeff wasn’t just _playing_ the music – he was actually singing along.

“I want you for worse or for better,” he crooned, hopelessly off key. “I would wait forever and ever… broke your heart, I’ll put it back together…I would wait forever and ever…”

Immediately, she bit her lip, trying desperately to keep from laughing outright. His back was to her as he continued to chop, so she managed to peer over the counter without calling attention to herself.

And as hard as it was to hold her breath so she wouldn’t erupt in laughter, it was worth the effort – because he was putting on quite the show, swinging his hips back and forth in a way that displayed his complete and utter lack of rhythm in a pretty spectacular way, and bobbing his head jerkily in a manner that could definitely be mistaken for a seizure from a distance.

She clutched the vinegar bottle to her chest, trying to hold herself together for another moment, and when she was fairly certain that she wasn’t going to lose it, she fished her phone out of her pocket so she could record a few seconds of his impromptu performance – because she knew that this was the kind of thing that she’d want to preserve for posterity.

“Tell her how you must have lost your mind,” he sang, like he was the only person left on earth. “And you left her all alone, and never told her why, why…”

He got his shoulders into the act then, making his dance even more awkward, and that was it – she couldn’t hold the laughter back anymore, snorting loud enough to be heard over the music and Jeff’s less than impressive voice.

In a panic, he spun around, his eyes wide and startled, like the proverbial deer in the headlights. She was pretty sure that he couldn’t look any more guilty or mortified, even if she walked in on him in bed with another woman, which was kind of absurd but also strangely adorable.

“Annie,” he practically gasped. “I didn’t hear you come in… how’d you get back so fast?” He tried to school his features into something resembling a stern expression. “You better not have been speeding in my car.”

“Simon’s is only a ten minute drive,” she said, setting the vinegar down on the counter. “And it’s always empty because only pretentious lunatics would spend $30 on a bottle of vinegar.”

He exhaled slowly, trying to take a discreet look at her laptop on the counter across from him where the music was coming from. It seemed like he was torn between wanting to stop the song and not wanting to call any more attention to what she’d caught him doing.  

She grinned, even as he scowled at her.

“This is your playlist,” he mumbled defensively.

She nodded. “Which you apparently know all the words to. And can’t resist grooving to,” she teased. “You’re a terrible dancer, you know that?”

Jeff frowned. “Oh, like you’re any better?”

It was her turn to get offended, and she crossed her arms over her chest as she glared at him. “I happen to be a great dancer,” she declared. “Abed always says so.”

He chuckled. “I hate to break it to you, but I don’t think Abed’s going to be asked to judge ‘Dancing With the Stars’ anytime soon.”

“Oh, yeah, well…” She hesitated, trying to figure out the best way to put him in his place. “Maybe I’m not the world’s greatest dancer,” she conceded. “But I can do a split. Can you?”

He grinned, stepping toward her with a downright predatory look in his gleaming eyes. “I can’t,” he said. “But maybe you could show me…”

He reached for her waist, pulling her into his arms and against his body. She wasn’t sure that she’d ever get used to this, to knowing what it felt like to have him hard and warm and honest against her, but she decided that was okay – she always wanted it to feel like this kind of thrill.

He leaned in, so his warm breath ghosted over her cheek. “I always liked slow dancing better anyway,” he whispered.

They weren’t really dancing, though – they were just swaying together in the middle of his kitchen to a song that was too fast for that kind of thing. She pushed up on her toes so she could press her mouth to his, feeling everything slow down for a long moment.

“I don’t have anything to be ashamed of,” he declared, after they drifted apart.

She smiled. “You don’t.”

“I mean, Taylor Swift writes some really catchy, poignant songs.”

“She does.”

“And she’s been through a lot… so she’s pretty wise.”

Annie nodded. “I completely agree.”

“But I really don’t think anyone else would be interested in hearing about this,” he said – which was obviously ridiculous. Britta loved anything that made Jeff squirm on principle alone, and Annie was pretty sure that the dean would pay big bucks to see him in any sort of unguarded moment. A screening of the 12 second video that she took on her phone would attract a pretty large crowd. “So you don’t need to go telling anyone about it, right?”

She cocked her head, hooking her fingers in the belt loops on his jeans, and shrugged. “That depends,” she told him.

He smirked, more amused than nervous. “On what?”

“On what you’re willing to do for me.”

He grinned, looking as utterly delighted as she’d ever seen him. “Are you _blackmailing_ me?”

She smiled slyly, reaching past him to pick up a piece of the pepper that he’d chopped and pop it in her mouth. “That’s such an ugly word,” she said. “It’s more like _quid pro quo_. You scratch my back and then _maybe_ I’ll scratch yours.”

If it was possible, his smile became even sharper, more intense. “So you’re saying you have an itch that needs some attention?”

On a whim, she stretched up to kiss him again, just because she could.

“Let’s start with this nice, fancy dinner and see where that takes us…”


	6. And You'll Know Just What I'm Dreaming For

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For Day 6 of #jxaappreciationweek2016, here is a some future fic.
> 
> Full disclosure: this is another ficlet that comes from a longer fic that I abandoned long ago.

–

He’s mixing up a protein shake in Annie and Britta’s kitchen early one morning when he hears the jingle of keys in the door. **  
**

The water is running in the bathroom, so Annie’s still in the shower, and he’s pretty sure that Britta’s still asleep because the Open/Closed sign on her door is still flipped to the Closed side. Jeff wipes his hands on a towel and cautiously makes his way around the counter, wondering absently if he should grab some sort of weapon, like one of the few sharp knives they have in the kitchen or the pink kettlebell that Annie uses for her workouts.

But then, burglars and other criminals usually don’t let themselves in with a key, so he probably isn’t going to have to defend the apartment with his life.

Still, whatever he’s expecting when the door swings open, it isn’t Troy Barnes, wearing a red and blue Hawaiian shirt and animal print sunglasses.

“Hey honies! I’m home!” he yells, dropping an overstuffed duffel bag at his feet.

“Troy?” Jeff says inanely.

“Jeff? What are you doing here?” Troy takes in Jeff’s attire, nothing more than pajama pants and a serious case of bedhead, and looks around, almost as if to confirm that he’s entered the right apartment. “Wait, did you burn out as a teacher too? Have to move in with Annie and Abed to save money?”

Jeff shakes his head. “No, I’m not… Abed isn’t … Annie and I…”

“Are you kidding me?” Troy practically wails. “I _missed_ it? You were taking your sweet damn time so I figured I could go away for like ten years and still get back before you made your move. Wait!” He grabs Jeff by the arms and practically shakes him, eyes narrowed accusingly. “You guys didn’t get _married_ without me, did you?”

–

Annie insists on making pancakes, waffles, _and_ French toast for breakfast in honor of Troy’s triumphant but unexpected return. She even makes smiley faces out of chocolate chips in all of Troy’s pancakes, and Britta does her part by making a pitcher of screwdrivers.

Jeff just sits at the table and listens as Troy shares stories of his time on the high seas, complete with pirates and shipwrecks and mermaid sightings. Jeff isn’t entirely sure how much of these crazy tales are accurate, but they’re entertaining to listen to, and the fact that Troy is actually here, in person, to babble on like this makes all of it even more fun.

The only dicey moment comes when they have to explain that Abed’s gone off to L.A. Troy starts to get teary-eyed so Annie and Britta each reach for one of his hands to try to console him. He makes it clear pretty quickly that he isn’t crying because he’s upset, though – he’s overcome with pride.

“That’s where he belongs,” Troy declares. “It’s where I knew he’d always wind up. I’m glad he made it.”

In that moment, it’s obvious how much Troy has grown up, how far he’s come from the kid who left Greendale almost two years ago. Jeff wonders if it’s patronizing or condescending to think that way, if someone like him is in any position to judge anyone else’s maturity.

But then, maybe he’s come a long way in the last year himself, so it isn’t arrogance that makes him see the changes in Troy.

It’s experience.

–

“We should totally get a bigger place,” Troy announces, once they’ve decided that he’ll move back in with Annie and Britta. “Something better, nicer.”

“You just got back, Troy,” Britta says. “Do you really want to go apartment-hunting right away?”

He shrugs. “Why not? I could even buy us a place!”

Annie frowns. “Troy, that’s really not–”

“I’ve got all that money from Pierce now, and real estate’s a good investment, right?” He glances at Jeff as if to confirm the fact. “Oooh! What about one of those awesome lofts near Wagner Park? I mean, how cool would it be to live in an old candy factory?”

“That’s Jeff’s neighborhood,” Annie says. She glances over at Jeff, her expression strangely unreadable.

Troy grins. “So it’s perfect then. You wouldn’t have to go too far for your booty calls and I can–”

“Troy!”

“What? I’m just being practical, that’s all. You feel me, right, Jeff?”

Jeff manages something that’s a cross between a smile and smirk before he nods.

–

Troy is beyond excited to hear that Greendale finally has a Sonic of its own, so even though he’s just eaten his own body weight in pancakes and French toast, he insists on going to get a blue coconut slush. Britta, who’s usually anti-chain restaurants and fast food in general, offers to go with him. Jeff suspects that it’s just to get out of washing the dishes, but Annie smiles slyly, like she knows something he doesn’t.

So they stand side by side at the kitchen sink, Annie washing and Jeff drying, in the deserted apartment. She hums under her breath as she scrubs, and he watches her out of the corner of his eye, trying to read her mood. She is obviously happy to have her friend back home, excited that their original little Greendale family is expanding for once instead of shrinking, but he wonders if she’s thinking about the same thing that he is, if she’s stuck on the same idea that he’s been ever since Troy talked about a new apartment.

“You don’t have to move with them, you know,” he blurts out, unaware that he’s going to speak until the words are already on their way out of his mouth.

She furrows her brow in confusion. “You want me to stay here by myself?”

“No. I just meant … what I’m saying is that you could move somewhere else.” He takes a breath, and shrugs. “Like into my place.”

The glass that’s washing slips out of her hand, crashing into the soapy water and against the stainless steel of the sink. She looks up at him, with a soft, sweet expression that makes his heart do that paradoxical thing where it speeds up and slows down all at once. “Jeff, that’s really, really sweet,” she says. “But I don’t want to put that much pressure on you. On _us_.”

Jeff frowns. “What pressure?”

“We’ve barely been together for a year, and neither of us has much experience with a relationship this serious. I just think it’s best to take things slow, that’s all.”

“Slow?” he laughs. “We’ve been at this for more than six years, Annie. I’m pretty sure I saw some glaciers whipping past us.”

She smiles, though she lowers her gaze back to the sink. “You know what I mean, Jeff.”

“Hey, like Troy, I’m just trying to be practical. If you moved in, my rent would be cut in half. I could double my skincare budget.”

She huffs out a laugh, bumping her arm against his. “I’m not sure that’s enough reason to cohabitate,” she says wryly.

She goes back to washing the dishes, scrubbing hard at a stubborn spot on one plate like it’s her life’s work, and he’s pretty sure that he never imagined this, in all those hazy, embarrassing daydreams he’d have about something, _anything_ , happening between them, that he’d be the one championing making things more serious and Annie would be the one dragging her feet. He isn’t entirely sure why this is suddenly so important to him – as far as he can recall, he hasn’t been thinking about asking her to move in at all recently – but as soon as Troy mentioned a new place, it seems like the only thing that really makes sense.

So he tries again.

“We’re together all the time anyway,” he points out. “This would only be making it official.”

She sighs, dropping the scrub brush into the suds and wiping at her forehead with the back of her forearm. He’s smart enough not to take any offense at her reluctance, but that doesn’t make it feel any better. She turns, leaning against the counter and curling her wet fingers into the hem of his tee shirt to pull him closer.

“This is really important,” she whispers, almost like she’s afraid to admit it out loud. “And I just don’t want to screw it up.”

He smiles, running a hand down her back. “Oh, come on. We both know that if one of us is going to screw this up, it’s me,” he teases.

She laughs, but smacks at his stomach. “Don’t even joke,” she says mock-sternly. “But seriously… I think things are going so well now because we both know that we have a place to go at the end of the day if we’re sick of each other. It’s like a safety net, you know? I’m afraid of what happens if we take that away.”

He nods slowly, so she knows that he’s hearing what she’s saying and taking it all very seriously. There is a lot at risk here – he feels that acutely everyday – but he’s been playing it safe for so long that that’s begun to feel like a trap itself.

Sometimes, there has to be a step forward or it’s just like taking a step back by default.

“We could do a trial run,” he suggests. “You live at my place half the week, and with Britta and Troy the other half… and we’ll see how it goes.”

Annie cocks her head, considering the suggestion carefully. She traces her fingertips over his arm, leaving wet streaks on his skin that feel strangely like a kiss. “As you pointed out, we’re already together all the time anyway,” she says. “So a trial run seems like a waste of time… what if I live at your place full-time, but just don’t bring over all of my stuff right now. And we just sort of ease our way into it…”

He smiles. “I could live with that.”

She laughs again, shaking her head indulgently. “Wow, could you sound any less enthused about it?”

He’s all for teasing and joking and making light of situations that are becoming too emotionally honest, but it’s important that she understand how serious he is about all of this. He doesn’t want there to be any room for doubt.

“I’m the one who asked you,” he says. “I think that shows just how much I want this.”

She instantly sobers up, her eyes wide and hopeful like in a hundred memories that he has of her, and her hand curls around his with a fierceness that doesn’t surprise him anymore, but still thrills him. “Me too,” she confesses. “Even if I’m really scared.”

“You can’t be any more scared than I am… and I’m totally on board.”

She nods, smiling as she places her hand on the counter so she has enough leverage to boost herself up and kiss him. “Me too,” she whispers against his mouth again. “Let’s do it.”

–

When Troy and Britta get back from Sonic, their lips both stained a pale blue, Annie informs them, very matter-of-factly, that she won’t be moving anywhere with them.

Troy bobs his head knowingly. “I got back just in time,” he says. “Or I’d have missed _everything_.” 


	7. You and I Both Know What The World Can Do

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the final day of #jxaappreciationweek2016, here is a free choice fic, which is another future type ficlet.

–

He doesn’t have time to get the gym before they’re all supposed to meet up for Frankie’s birthday dinner, but he is determined to squeeze in a few sets of push-ups, crunches, and tricep dips before he has to shower and change.

He is contemplating what to wear – he bought a new charcoal cashmere sweater the other day, but he thinks his favorite cobalt blue button-down might be a better choice considering that he’s winter-pale and his skin could use a little extra brightening up – as he pushes through the last set of crunches, which is probably why he doesn’t notice Annie peeking her head over the back of the sofa, her chin resting almost thoughtfully on the cushion, to watch him for a long moment.

She’s been camped out on his couch all afternoon, working on some project for her Criminal Justice Statistics course, which means she’s been pretty quiet. That isn’t unusual at all – she has an uncanny ability to block out all and any distractions when she is really concentrating her attention on something. He knows that first hand, having happily been the target of her single-minded focus more times than he count – but the look that she’s shooting him now is a little concerning.

She seems worried, shy, even a little bit hesitant as she bites at her lip.

“You okay?” he asks, as he rolls over and gets into push-up position. “Statistics can’t be _that_ bad.”

She nods, managing a tight smile. “Can I ask you something?”

He stops mid push-up, unable to resist a smirk. “I don’t know. _Can_ you?” She wrinkles her nose in a way that shows she’s more amused than annoyed. “Shoot,” he tells her.

She sits upright, throwing her shoulders back so she is suddenly the picture of poise and confidence. “Can you see any scenario in which you’d want kids?” she asks.

As soon as the words leave her mouth, his arms give out from underneath him, and he does a faceplant on the hardwood of his living room floor that sets his ears ringing. He hurries to right himself, sitting up on the floor and discretely rubbing at his nose as he meets her gaze.

She has a hand pressed over her mouth, but he can see the corner of it lifting just a bit behind her fingers, which means that she’s still finding something humorous in all of this.

He isn’t quite capable of that at the moment.

“Is there something you need to tell me?” he asks back, hoping he doesn’t sound as panicked as feels. He is already a sweaty mess from his impromptu workout, but he’s pretty sure he’d be sweating bullets right now anyway.

Annie furrows her brow. “I don’t … what would…” Her eyes widen when she realizes what he’s getting at. “Oh, God, no! No! There is absolutely nothing to tell in that regard. _Nothing_.”

She waves her arms through the air emphatically, so he feels like it’s safe to believe her. He exhales heavily, so relieved that he’s actually able to laugh again.

“Okay,” he says. “So why ask about, you know, _kids_?”

He’s pretty sure that he lowers his voice when he gets to that last syllable, almost like it’s a dirty word, like he might conjure up one of the little creatures out of thin air just by saying it out loud.

But Annie just shrugs, because she apparently sees this as nothing more than harmless conversation.

“Well, it’s just… things have been going pretty well with us, right?” He nods, because it is the simple, remarkable truth – in the not quite a year since he finally managed to tell her the truth and learned to embrace her rather than let her go, he’s been happier in a way that he doesn’t think he can remember since childhood, a time when he was too naive not to be. “And it’s just … it’s getting pretty serious…”

That point he might argue. It isn’t _getting_ serious. It’s been serious from the start, because they are part of one another’s lives in a way that’s always meant that there’s no turning back.

But he nods again, because he doesn’t want her to get the wrong idea.

“And well, we’ve never really talked about kids,” she continues. “Ever. And I just thought that… don’t get me wrong… I’m nowhere near ready to even _think_ about them in any kind of real world way, but I just don’t want to wake up in five or ten years and realize we never discussed children and find out we have totally different ideas about the whole thing.”

It’s become clear that this really is nothing more than a harmless conversation, and Jeff thinks that he can deal with that. But he wipes at his face with the edge of his t-shirt, stalling for a moment so he can get himself together. When he drops the fabric, Annie is watching him, but her expression is serene, almost painfully patient, and he feels something inside himself relax.

“I don’t think I’ve ever stopped to consider whether or not I’d _want_ to have kids,” he admits. “I just assumed I wouldn’t. Because I’ve always kind of felt like it’s something I shouldn’t do. My dad was a shitty role model so I don’t know how I’d figure out the whole fatherhood thing when I don’t really know what a good father looks like. Does that make sense?”

She nods. “I totally understand,” she says. “My mother was never the warmest person in the world and she put a ton of pressure on me – which is part of the reason why I developed a drug addiction at 17. And I know I’m naturally competitive and kind of relentless, so I worry that I’d always be pushing my children to be the best and the brightest and the most impressive, even if none of it made them happy, even if it drove them crazy…”

She shakes her head, like the mere thought has the power to undo her, and he thinks he understands too. He can’t imagine anything worse than putting some kid through what his dad did with him, and sometimes, it seems inescapable, like it’s encoded in his DNA.

“And then sometimes, I think about what a terrible place the world can be,” Annie continues. “Where you get bullied for being the slightest bit different, and people are shooting up churches and nightclubs and movie theaters and just everywhere, and the polar ice caps are melting but no cares, and Donald Trump can become a major candidate for the presidency, and I really wonder if I’d want to inflict all of that on a child…”

It is certainly an accurate picture of the world that she’s painting, full of plenty of good reasons not to reproduce, but it is also so hopelessly bleak that it startles him.

“That doesn’t sound like you,” he says. “You’re usually so optimistic.”

She offers up a wry smile. “I also have a tendency to overthink everything to death, though, so sometimes one cancels the other out.”

He understands that too, he thinks.

“I guess it’s fair to say we both have complicated feelings about the whole kid thing, then,” he says.

She nods slowly, looking thoughtful and beautiful and like everything he’s ever wanted. “So what does that mean?” she wonders.

He pushes himself to his feet, moving forward to lay his hands on the back of the sofa so he can get a little closer to her. “Well, you’re not pregnant, right?” Annie nods again, though it’s more of an aggressive jerk of her head. “And you don’t hear your biological clock ticking at the moment either, right?” He gets another quick nod. “Then I guess we just let it be… and if your feelings change, you let me know… and we’ll go from there.”

She smiles, small and sweet. “That sounds like a good plan,” she tells him, and he watches as she starts to gather up her textbooks and notepads. “I’m going to go get changed for dinner, okay?”

He watches as she heads for his bedroom, books in her arms, and he knows that she isn’t angry or disappointed and they didn’t even disagree at all, but the air feels charged with something that he doesn’t quite like.

He feels himself panicking again, though in an entirely different way than he did earlier.

“Hey,” he calls after her, and she turns expectantly, like she knew he was going to do it even before he did. “You know, I can definitely see a scenario in which I’d want a dog.”

When she smiles now, it lights up her entire face, and he wishes that it could always be that easy to put that look on her face – just open his mouth and share the truth, however small and inadequate it might be.

“Really?”

“Yeah,” he agrees. “I mean, I really like dogs.”

“I didn’t know that,” she says, delighted. “I really like them too.”

By the next afternoon, they’re at the shelter, picking out a little mutt of a puppy, who pees in Jeff’s car on the way home and chews up the leg of his coffee table within five minutes of entering the apartment.

Somehow, there’s no panic involved at all.


End file.
